how does YOUR garden grow?

One of the great things about a house is that I can finally put in a vegetable garden. I've been looking foward to growing my own tomatoes, zucchini, sweet peas, and berries, of course! But it's a little overwhelming for someone who has few vague memories of gardening as a child. Ideally, we would put in a real patch--I even have the location picked out, and a harebrained scheme to cut the sod out and transplant it to some of our more bare patches of lawn. Kills two birds with one stone, see? I get a garden and I fill in our patchy lawn. But I don't think we have the resources or, honestly, the willpower to do it this year (we still have to get our grass going, and stain our deck, and get rid of the rest of the weeds in back).

But when I was weeding today on the side of the house, I discovered a 1 ft x 5 ft patch of ground that might work as our first garden. Currently there are massive, waist high weeds and some struggling rose bushes growing there. I'd like to keep the rose bushes (we have some other roses in another part of the yard; maybe I can move them?) but I'd rather have a vegetable garden, so I guess they could go.

Can I grow anything in a patch that small? It gets full sun for about 6 hours a day. What is best suited for growing in a strip like that? Any ideas?